About
How folkeyap counts
folkeyap tracks what members of Folketinget, the Danish parliament, do in public: how long they speak in the chamber, the questions they put to ministers, the proposals they table and how they vote. Everything is computed from Folketinget's own open data.
Beta
folkeyap is in beta. The figures, the methods behind them and the pages themselves may still change, and mistakes are more likely than they will be later.
Disclaimer
- Unofficial. folkeyap is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or checked by Folketinget.
- Automatic, without review. Every figure is computed by software from Folketinget's open data and published without anyone checking it by hand. Name matching, party histories and the source data itself can contain errors, and Folketinget sometimes completes or corrects its records later.
- Volume, not quality. The measures count activity. They say nothing about whether a speech was good, a question useful or a politician effective, and they leave out committee work, negotiations and constituency work entirely.
- Editorial choices. Grouping parties into wings, and deciding what counts as a question or a proposal, are choices made for this site. They are explained below.
- No warranty. Treat the figures as a starting point and check anything important against ft.dk, the authoritative record.
Updates
The figures are refreshed automatically several times a day; nobody edits the numbers. An update that looks incomplete or inconsistent is held back and the previous figures stay online. If the figures are more than three days old, a notice appears at the top of every page.
Sources
Everything comes from Folketinget's open data: the official chamber transcripts, which record when each speech starts and ends, and the parliament's records of members, parties, ministers, bills, motions, interpellations, questions and votes. Recent transcripts are preliminary and are re-read when Folketinget updates them.
Covered: 7 sessions, 2022–23, 1st session to 2026–27. Last updated 25 Oct 2026. A session (samling) normally runs from the first Tuesday in October; an election splits the year into a 1st and 2nd session.
Definitions
- Speaking time
- The summed duration of a person's speeches in the chamber, including short remarks (korte bemærkninger), replies and ministers' answers. Time spent chairing the sitting as Speaker or deputy Speaker is reported separately as presiding time and not counted. Committee meetings, consultations (samråd) and anything outside the chamber are not transcribed this way and are not included.
- Speeches and words
- Every turn at the microphone counts as a speech; words are counted in the transcript text. In preliminary transcripts some speeches read only "Talen er under udarbejdelse" (the speech is being written up). They count as speeches and speaking time but add words only once the text is in, and they are left out of words per minute.
- Debates
- Distinct agenda items a person spoke on.
- §20 questions
- Questions to ministers under § 20 of the Standing Orders (numbered S 1, S 2 …), credited to the member who asked, including questions to the Prime Minister in question time (US numbers).
- Committee questions
- Questions a committee sends to a minister at a member's request, credited to that member. Questions put by a committee as a whole count in the session totals but are not credited to anyone.
- Motions
- Beslutningsforslag. Every listed sponsor gets credit; at party level a motion counts once per party with at least one sponsor.
- Bills
- Lovforslag. Private members' bills are credited to their sponsors, government bills to the minister who introduced them.
- Interpellations
- Forespørgsler, credited to each member listed as interpellator.
- Votes cast
- The share of recorded divisions in which a member voted for, against or abstained rather than being absent. Folketinget relies on pairing agreements (clearing), so absence is often arranged in advance and is not a sign of neglect; ministers rarely vote in person. With fewer than 10 recorded votes behind it, the count is shown (for example "3 of 7") instead of a percentage.
- Votes against the party line
- A vote that differs from the most common vote among the member's party colleagues present in the same division. Parties with fewer than two members voting, independents, and divisions where the party split evenly are left out.
- Seats and per-seat figures
- A party's seats are the average number of seats it held over the session: the days its members held an ordinary seat divided by the days in the session. Substitutes and members who switch party therefore count for the time they actually sat. Per-seat figures divide totals by this average.
- Party attribution
- Every activity counts for the party the person belonged to that day. Ministers from outside Folketinget are counted for the party in their official biography.
Political wings
Parties are grouped into the two traditional blocs, defined by which prime-minister candidate they back, plus the centre and the four North Atlantic seats. This is an editorial choice that can be argued with, not an official classification. In particular, the 2022–2026 government spanned both blocs, and the North Atlantic parties line up with the Danish blocs inconsistently, so they are shown separately.
| Wing | Parties in the tracked sessions |
|---|---|
| Red bloc Rød blok | ALTELFGRVSSF |
| Centre Midten | M |
| Blue bloc Blå blok | BPDDDFKFLANBV |
| North Atlantic Nordatlantiske mandater | IAJFNSPSIU |
| Independents Uden for grupperne | UFG |
Caveats
- Transcripts name speakers rather than identify them, so folkeyap matches names to Folketinget's member records, using party membership to tell namesakes apart; a speaker that can't be matched still counts towards their party.
- Transcripts are published a few days after each sitting, so the most recent days may be missing.
- Volume is not quality. Opposition parties ask most of the questions and table most motions; governing parties' work happens largely through ministers and negotiations that leave no trace here.
- Politicians' pages show the median for all politicians as a yardstick, not a ranking. A place in a league table suggests a precision and a judgement the counts can't support.